Chris Shays, the long-time Connecticut Congressman from Fairfield County — back in the days when New England actually had Republican congressmen — had a subtle strategy to ensure that he could be happily ensconced in the middle ground that many Connecticut Republicans were comfortable with.
While Shays developed a reputation for being a left-wing lunatic on such things as environmental regulation and stayed away from the “social issues” as best he could, he carefully picked GOP nut ball legislation that he knew would never pass — and voted for it, with enthusiasm. Privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority? Chris was on board.
When Connecticut’s Republican U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker decided to run for governor, he transformed himself into an “independent” and won the election, eventually offering up a personal income tax that even most Democrats never dreamed could be sneaked through.
And now, Joe Lieberman, the one-time, stereotypical, Democratic left-winger, serves as an “independent” Connecticut U.S. senator who consorts with Republicans on foreign policy and health reform matters, and is the poster boy for the fuzziness that is party label in Connecticut.
Especially at the national level, voters appreciate the marketing value of party labels. Any number of academic studies have confirmed that many, if not most, voters, use party labels to make many of their election choices — as opposed to doing a three-month, in-depth analysis of how a particular candidate feels about carbon trading, Afghanistan, and the earned income tax credit.
Many folks are mad at Joe Lieberman because he is sabotaging the party label ad campaign. Crest or Colgate? Colgate or Crest? We don’t want both brands on the same toothbrush.
Journalists enjoy the partisan labeling as well; to report on the idiosyncrasies of the “Democrats” and “Republicans” is less tiring than probing the troubled souls of each and every one.
The two-party tradition first began to unravel just a bit in the politics of some of the snobby bedroom suburbs. “City managers” (often, in the early days, retired civil engineers) were hired to oversee town employees; “mayors” were largely ceremonial; and the town councils were, at least in theory, empowered to “set policy” in communities of like-minded, upscale folks who didn’t have much to quarrel about.
The council-manager form of government caught on in much of the country, not so much in big cities, where warring factions and patronage found party labels helpful, but in suburbs and smaller towns. The city manager mantra: there’s no Democratic or Republican way to fill a pothole.
The “nonpartisan” piece of it never caught on in Connecticut — at least in theory. As a practical matter, many of Connecticut’s local elections, especially in “town manager” communities, are tepid, bewildering efforts to pretend that local Democrats and Republicans are very, very different.
The murkiness of the party agendas pops up in Connecticut’s suburban and small towns with increasing frequency. Newington now has a Republican mayor and a Democratic majority on the Town Council. In Plainville, where the council picks the mayor from its members, the Democratic majority picked a Republican for the one-year post.
The notion that essentially apolitical, nonpartisan governance isn’t ideal in bigger cities, where the population is more diverse and the politics is more rough around the edges, may be open for review. Hartford’s shedding of city-manager government and embrace of “strong mayor” government has led to indictments and mediocrity — whether or not it is theoretically preferable to the city manager days.
In the leafy, town-manager suburb where I live, we reelected the Republican majority to the town council. It was a stirring confirmation that we liked the Republican way to fill potholes.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
